Theology and Literature in the Age of Johnson: Resisting Secularism

by Melvyn New (Editor), Gerard Reedy S.J. (Editor), Melvyn New (Contribution by), Donald R. Wehrs (Contribution by), John A. Dussinger (Contribution by)

Overview

Theology and Literature in the Age of Johnson: Resisting Secularism contains seventeen essays exploring the complex relationships between literary intentions and theological concerns of authors writing in the second half of the eighteenth century. The diversity of literary forms and subjects, from Fielding and Richardson to Burke and Wollstonecraft, is matched by a diversity of approaches and theologies. To argue that the age “resisted secularism” is by no means to argue that resistance was blindly doctrinal or rigidly uniform. The many ways secularism could be resisted is the subject of the collection.

Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644530979
Publisher:	University of Delaware Press
Publication date:	06/14/2012
Pages:	378
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

Melvyn New is Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida.
Gerard Reedy, S.J., was former Professor of English at Fordham University and former President of the College of the Holy Cross.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction by Melvyn New

1. Novelistic Redemption and the History of Grace: Pratical Theology and Literary Form in Richardson's Pamela and Fielding's Joseph Andrews by Donald R. Wehrs
2. The Oxford Methodists (1733; 1738): The Purloined Letter of John Wesley at Samuel Richardson's Press by John A. Dussinger
3. Henry Fielding Straddles a Moving Theme by Regina Janes
4. Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and the Problem of Heaven by E. Derek Taylor
5. The Intellectual Background to Johnson's Life of Browne: A Study of Johnsonian Construction by Robert G. Walker
6. "But Philosphy Can Tell No More": Johnson's Christian Moralism and the Genre of Rasselas by Patrick Muller
7. Johnson's Fallen World by Steven Scherwatzky
8. Aesthetics and Theology in Samuel Johnson's Life of Isaac Watts and Prayers and Meditations (1785) by Katharine Kickel
9. Providence, Futurity, and Typology in Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield by Nicholas Seager
10. Divine and Human Love: Letters between John Norris and Mary Astell, Laurence Sterne and Eliza Draper by Geoff Newton
11. Tristram Shandy and the Devil by Ryan J. Stark 
12. Methodists on the Move in the The Spiritual Quixote by Brett C. McInelly
13. "A Very Agreable Way of Thinking": Devotion and Doctrine in Boswell's Religion by Paul Tankard
14. Bluestockings and Religion by Deborah Heller
15. "Through a Glass Darkly": Edmund Burke, Political Theology, and Literary Allusion by Frans De Bruyn
16. The Bible in the Dock: Thomas Erskine, Thomas Paine, and the Trial of The Age of Reason by Roger D. Lund
17. The Novel as the Art of Secular Scripture: Mary Wollstonecraft's Feminist Gospel by Nathalie Zimpfer

About the Contributors

What People are Saying About This

Elizabeth Kraft

"Intellectual histories of the Age of Johnson have tended to ignore the fact that religion and theology occupied the minds, as well as the hearts, of many of the best writers of the time, including Johnson himself. This volume of essays, focused on the intersection of theology and literature in the mid-to-late eighteenth century, addresses (and redresses) that longstanding distortion. With its stunning variety, depth, and sweep, this collection repositions not only Johnson, but many of his contemporaries, in a world they themselves would recognize. A long-needed corrective, this volume admirably achieves its mission of restoring religious thought and theological inquiry to the center of eighteenth-century literary studies."—

Editorial Reviews

"[...] the collection restores a historical sense of just how great the influence of theological discourse was on writers of every stamp during the late 18th century."-- "Choice"

From the Publisher

"[…] the collection restores a historical sense of just how great the influence of theological discourse was on writers of every stamp during the late 18th century."

Choice

The year 2012 was a fruitful one for scholarship on the relationship between religion and literature. The essays collected in Theology and Literature in the Age of Johnson: Resisting Secularism, edited by Melvyn New and Gerard Reedy, take their impetus from New’s entry on ‘Anglicanism’ in Samuel Johnson in Context, the main points of which—the dynamics of latitudinarianism, and eighteenth-century secularization and resistance to it—he rehearses in the present volume’s introduction, before turning to trace the fall and rise of secularist scholarship from its apogee in the 1960s to a recent renewal of interest in the religious contexts of eighteenth-century literature.

The Year's Work In English Studies

"Intellectual histories of the Age of Johnson have tended to ignore the fact that religion and theology occupied the minds, as well as the hearts, of many of the best writers of the time, including Johnson himself. This volume of essays, focused on the intersection of theology and literature in the mid-to-late eighteenth century, addresses (and redresses) that longstanding distortion. With its stunning variety, depth, and sweep, this collection repositions not only Johnson, but many of his contemporaries, in a world they themselves would recognize. A long-needed corrective, this volume admirably achieves its mission of restoring religious thought and theological inquiry to the center of eighteenth-century literary studies."—

Elizabeth Kraft

With the 17 essays collected in this sizable volume, New (emer., Univ. of Florida) and Reedy (Fordham Univ.) restate the importance of theology in later 18th-century culture. As the introduction argues, the literature of the time requires being read and understood in terms of its theology, especially as writers defended Christianity and perhaps more interestingly literature itself by resorting to technical points of doctrine and belief. The essays address the period in its breadth and variety, with Samuel Johnson at the center, and various treatments of figures and subjects as diverse as Richardson, Fielding, Methodism, the Bluestockings, Goldsmith, Sterne, Boswell, Burke, Paine, and Wollstonecraft. Overall, the scholarship is meticulous, presenting the writers and their particular engagements with theology in some detail. It is especially useful to be reminded that just as Johnson or Fielding engaged with theology in defense of more traditional morality, so did figures such as Paine or Wollstonecraft find themselves animated by theological controversy. As a result, the collection restores a historical sense of just how great the influence of theological discourse was on writers of every stamp during the late 18th century. Summing Up: Recommended.

CHOICE

The year 2012 was a fruitful one for scholarship on the relationship between religion and literature. The essays collected in Theology and Literature in the Age of Johnson: Resisting Secularism, edited by Melvyn New and Gerard Reedy, take their impetus from New’s entry on ‘Anglicanism’ in Samuel Johnson in Context, the main points of which—the dynamics of latitudinarianism, and eighteenth-century secularization and resistance to it—he rehearses in the present volume’s introduction, before turning to trace the fall and rise of secularist scholarship from its apogee in the 1960s to a recent renewal of interest in the religious contexts of eighteenth-century literature.

Eighteenth-Century Book Reviews Online